>[!meta-dates] >- **Created:** 2025-07-17 >- **Last updated:** 2025-08-01 >- **Author:** TJ Trewin I'd like to explore some thoughts on [[Building a world from scratch - tectonics & all|building a world from scratch]], there's a few ways to show the worldbuilding in terms of its presentation and its narrative perspective, and these are my notes pondering on these so I can decide my approach. 😁 Characters present themselves not only through their interactions but also in their mannerisms, the way they dress, how they move, the tone of their communication and how they express it. To make a world feel alive, I reckon worldbuilding should be presented like a character, too. >[!question] Questions: >- Who is the **intended audience** for this worldbuilding? >- **What does the audience get to know?** What order will they discover it in? Should any parts be kept secret? Is it all factually correct, or are some parts of the lore told from only one side of the story? >- Is it for a **produced outcome** (e.g. a novel, video production, game, wiki, or TTRPG campaign) that lends itself to certain presentation styles? If there's more than one, or a series, the presentation or perspective might change in each one. ## Presentation Consider how the mood and genre(s) of the world are presented through: - Descriptions of senses and emotions - The type of words and descriptions used to convey the lore - Visual language, imagery, shape & colour language - Recurring themes and topics, symbolism, and metaphors - The types of worldbuilding elements that are focussed on, or left out entirely - The technical format and media used in its presentation (catering to the intended audience) ## Narrative perspective Decide which point(s) of view (POV) the lore is revealed or explained from: - A main character, or group of core characters - Following an overarching story - Exploring a fixed point in time, or spanning a particular set of events - Branching into multiple timelines, linear or non-linear - The viewpoint of a losing, or victorious side - The views and beliefs of a particular group of people - An omnipresent view, in-universe or out-of-universe - The perspective of someone very young, or very old - A non-sentient being, inanimate object, or part of nature - A particular place or set of locations - A particular tense: told from the past, present, or future | | First person | Second person | Third person | | ----------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Past** | When the creature leapt towards me, my instincts kicked in and I ran away. | When the creature leapt towards you, your instincts kicked in and you ran away. | When the creature leapt towards them, their instincts kicked in and they ran away. | | **Present** | As the creature leaps towards me, my instincts kick in and I start running away. | As the creature leaps towards you, your instincts kick in and you start running away. | As the creature leaps towards them, their instincts kick in and they start running away. | | **Future** | When the creature leaps towards me, my instincts will kick in and I'll run away. | When the creature leaps towards you, your instincts will kick in and you'll run away. | When the creature leaps towards them, their instincts will kick in and they'll run away. | ## Mixed combinations Some narrative perspectives or presentation styles could be used in different aspects of how the worldbuilding is shown. Opposing styles are great for contrast; if everything is dark, gritty, and scary all the time, then that becomes mundane and unsurprising, but when a joyous moment or glimmer of hope is suddenly thwarted by a horrific twist it's *much* more impactful. Perhaps the narrative changes perspective based on the context: a diplomatic note or personal journal entry written in first person by a character, a set of instructions to someone or a narration to the audience in second person, or maybe third person narrative from a particular POV. I think these kinds of choices should be made with intent, 🤔 otherwise the world will feel too inconsistent and confusing to be immersed in. Back to the character analogy, if they drastically changed appearance, mannerisms, and tone all the time you wouldn't be able to understand or connect with them very easily. - - - ## What will I choose for mine? In previous worldbuilding projects I've explored a few different styles presented as an interactive wiki - I found a third-person perspective easy to write but harder to make it sound interesting. Second-person perspective took more time for me to write, but it forced me to think about how the receiving person experienced the world (*you hear... you smell... you feel...*). I've also mixed in snippets of first-person perspectives in the form of dialogue quotes and found bits of paper, which is something I love experiencing in video games as it adds depth through extra details. I also made a short choose-your-path adventure which was a lot of complicated fun to set up, but I wouldn't want to do this for a whole world without a set project scope. I really enjoy the wiki style format because I'm purely [[Building a world from scratch - tectonics & all|enjoying the worldbuilding process]] without an end product in mind. The downside of a wiki though is that it's really easy to just *infodump* all the lore and that's that. 💩 It's a bit like a wiki or guidebook for a video game - instead of experiencing it for yourself, it tells you the story step-by-step as a walkthrough and lists all of the related stats, items, and locations to read through. Maybe the big plot secrets have spoiler warnings, maybe they don't. Aside from having a linear navigation for quests, the intended audience has free roam to explore and wiki-dive to explore the world's lore however they like. Not to say that game wikis and guidebooks are *bad* at all, but they're designed for an audience who's already playing (or has played) something. ### Braindump of ideas So how will I do "show, don't tell" in my worldbuilding wiki? 🤔 - Hard facts and meta information will be kept in a separate folder, presented more like fact-sheets or encyclopaedic entries. It won't link to any lore pages to prevent the audience from accidentally wiki diving out-of-universe. 😆 This'll be stuff like the *actual* world map and its climates and tectonic plates nerdery, which myths are more factually based than others, and collected thoughts on how magic works - I still want to share this stuff but the inhabitants of my world might not have this knowledge or have "produced" these kind of maps or diagrams. - "Truths" are told from the most relevant perspective of the note/topic, meaning that in order to learn the whole picture you need to explore things from multiple perspectives. - A historical battle mentioned in a note about `Country_A` will be remembered differently than `Country_B`'s note. One character may remember something fondly, while the other found it traumatic. - Different regions may refer to different currencies, measurements, or calendar systems. - The names of places, items, and traditions may differ depending on perspective - so it might have different mentions through various notes, but the actual thing itself will still only be told from its most relevant perspective. - Visual imagery is presented from the relevant POV - I want wonky, inaccurate, and artistically depicted maps! - A place in the wilderness might actually be described through the primal senses of a creature who claims the natural habitat as their territory. Or perhaps for places I've not fleshed out yet, a small critter passing through may observe the few bits that *are* there. - An overview of the world itself might mention that `Religion_1` believes that the world was made by `CreationTheory_A`, but `Religion_2` believes it was actually formed in `CreationTheory_B`. `Character_1` on the other hand, reckons it's this bit of A's and that bit of B's, but `Character_2` thinks that's the most absurd thing they've ever heard. - Not every part of the world will be explained or "solvable", leaving things open-ended or up for the audience's own interpretation and speculation. >[!warning] Potential issues I might run into: >- Permalink/slug names >- Updating pages with new lore or context if its only presented from the most relevant viewpoint. Will that relevance ever shift? If so, what happens to the old perspective? >- Multiple perspectives - I'll need to consider what the "common ground" note will be. Back to the creation myths example, that might mean one note collecting the different theories which links to the relevant faiths or POVs. >[!check] Fun things I'm looking forward to: >- Actually doing some worldbuilding again! 🎉 >- Learning more cool stuff and applying it rather than "save for later"! >- Seeing all the connected lore in the graph view! Explore more of my worldbuilding project here: [[Overview - start here]]